Impermanence and Suffering

The months since I last updated this blog have been filled with unexpected challenges that have tested every aspect of my spiritual and emotional growth. Nagging illness of varying degrees of severity, emotional abuse and failed relationships, accidents which could have been life threatening had things gone just slightly differently. The move from Boudha back to McleodGanj. The move from McleodGanj back to the USA.


Impermanence. 
Samsara.
Suffering.


Learning that you are viewed as an object to be used by those you have devoted so much time and energy to. Learning that even a Buddhist monastic can act completely opposite than the Buddhist precepts dictate, causing deep harm.


Painful stuff.


Often working in a blur, not even sure what you are doing, just killing time. Every day fading into the next, and never feeling sure you are going to get through to see another one. 


One day it becomes clear that you are, in fact, still alive, and that progress has somehow been made, in invisible moments. Somehow the seemingly random bits and pieces have fallen into some kind of pattern. Healing has happened, even if only in small amounts. 
New projects have begun, and some have even been completed.


It often feels like I will never be exactly where I want to be. I often feel hopeless, too far behind in "work" to ever catch up. There are some paths which I thought would lead me home that now seem to have been dead ends. These days I don't even know where that longed-for "home" might be.


Still, I am continuing the journey, trying to "allow" surprises to appear.


In my next post, I will share one of those "surprises", a photography book from one amazing afternoon on the outskirts of Kathmandu.